a Perimeter 4

1

III.i……A₁ B₁ C₁ B₂ C₂ B₃ C₃ A₂

…………then I say, that this doubt I intend to solve and clear up in this little book, in part even more doubtful
– La Vita Nuova

I was just passing through when I met her. I was meeting an old classmate for a drink before I left and he brought her with him, maybe on a date, maybe not, it was hard to tell. She and I talked, for no more than 15 minutes, while he sat there and watched. But I was just passing through and she might have been on a date and I left. I almost wrote her a number of times, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't.
…………I'd known, though, I'd pass through town again 5 months later, so I could see about her then. When I came back, I asked a friend we had in common to make sure she and I would run into each other. He did! A bunch of us sat around that night catching up, which made it hard to talk to her. She kept getting up to leave and I kept asking her not to, telling her that I really wanted to talk to her and I hoped she wouldn't go. I said, "I almost wrote you." She said, "You haven't even offered to buy me a drink."
…………I bought her a drink. We talked for hours, until the bar closed and we kept talking in the parking lot until we were both very cold and tired. I invited her to come with me on the rest of my trip. She told me to sleep on it. She didn't give me her number.
…………In the morning, I got word to her that I had thought about it, that I wanted her to come. I'd be at the coffee shop when she got off work. She sent word back that she'd be there.
…………We drove and talked, talked so much we had no idea how slowly we drove, but every once in a while we'd exclaim "we're going so fast, look where we are already." We drove through four states and finally pulled into a hotel off the turnpike at 5:00am. I asked for a room with two beds so she could see how respectable I thought she was. We kept talking in the dark, each in their own bed, barely awake at all. As our talking trailed off I reached my open hand into the dark gap between our beds and at that very moment her hand was already there.

Note: The epigraph is Emerson's translation.

2

a people occupied as
we in opening
……………………rivers

grass
………you while not unto me
anything
……………I have not

III.i.A₁

3

exemplars of little
clarity and gesture

until the grains are small
I think
…………it must be hard

to be a woman
I think
…………in the pouring

III.i.B₁

4

a gift so potent
………………………to kill
the weak as a visage
so beheld
…………… to fabricate
which innuminous kind
bestill the suchened still

III.i.C₁

5

I think in the pouring
forth of small niched
………………………………ferns

the initial degree
of depletion masked by

plied
………deformity
all ability is

III.i.B₂

6

be still the suchened still
imposable
……………… deliver
to the cycle I will
ritualize I will
ritualize
……………every kind

III.i.C₂

7

all ability is
benign old scatter

in flight along not some
particular
………………channels

inevitably prior
all flow to the mode

III.i.B₃

8

…………every kind
alight
…………in variance
be called
……………material
by thy gossipings caught
and carried oft
……………………deliver

III.i.C₃

9

unto you what might
………………………………be
I the maw of averages

obliterate
………………all most all
with the means to combine

III.i.A₂